The process of making pizza begins with preparing dough and forming the dough into individual pizza shells. Toppings are added to the pizza shell and the topped pizza is placed in an oven. The oven subjects the pizza to controlled heat and humidity to raise and bake the dough and cook the toppings. Traditionally a hot air convection oven has been used for this purpose. The time required to prepare and cook a single pizza is approximately 8 to 20 minutes at an oven temperature of 200 to 315 degrees Celsius.
The time required to cook pizza is generally limited by the time required for the leavened dough to rise. This process of raising the dough is known in the baking trade as proofing. Shorter baking times, or higher baking temperatures will affect the proofing of the pizza shells such that the dough may not raise at all, or may blister and burn. The pizza toppings do not have such critical limitations and can be baked with fewer restrictions on time and temperature.
To facilitate the making of pizzas in commercial quantities, an assembly line approach has been developed. In this type of pizza making approach, the pizza shells are normally proofed before toppings are added to them. After the shells have been proofed, the process of adding the toppings and baking the fully prepared pizza can be accomplished relatively quickly in large quantities. The critical limitation on the efficiency of this approach is the amount of time required to proof the pizza shells. Traditionally, the shells are proofed in a heated, humidity-controlled chamber requiring approximately 40 minutes at a temperature of approximately 40 degrees Celsius and an 80 percent relative humidity.